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Why it makes sense to open transit competition: Keenan

The use of SmartPhone communications to run a modern, loosely scheduled, loosely routed jitney service points to potential transportation solutions in places where mass transit problems seem hard to solve.

Urbanist and author Jane Jacobs, seen on her front porch in 2004, had interesting insights into companies like Uber. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Jane Jacobs died before Uber was created. But it seems the late author and city thinking guru — who once lived in the Annex and serves as a kind of patron saint of urbanism in Toronto — could have been talking directly about that company in 2001 when she spoke to an interviewer about how jitney operators work in other parts of the world, and how she wished such small-scale solutions could be allowed in North America’s suburbs.

“I wish we could do more of that. But we have so much history against it, and so many institutional things already in place against it,” she said. “The idea that you have to use great big behemoths of vehicles, when the service actually would be better in station-wagon size. It shows how unnatural and foolish monopolies are. The only thing that saves the situation is when illegal things begin to break the monopoly.”

In my last two columns, I’ve been discussing Uber, the company who seems all too willing to do illegal things to break the monopolies on transportation in Toronto. First I talked about the very real problems presented by Uber’s employment model, and then I talked about how the launch of its jitney-like UberHop service shows a failure in how the King streetcar is operated. Today I want to discuss a further opportunity UberHop might suggest.

The use of SmartPhone communications to run a modern, loosely scheduled, loosely routed jitney service points to potential transportation solutions in places where mass transit problems seem hard to solve. Immediately upon UberHop’s launch, Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong, to his credit, started discussing the use of “micro-transit” in serving areas such as the inner suburbs.

This is not a new idea, per se, as the Jacobs quote above points out. Jacobs, spoke and wrote at various points about the potential of jitney services to fill in the suburban transit gap. A big part of the problem in places like Scarborough and Etobicoke is that the way subdivisions were built means that many people live on winding cul-de-sacs that are hard to serve with a regular bus stopping at regular intervals. The population density is so low that a bus wouldn’t fill up serving those who live there, and those same road designs also mean people often live a 10-minute walk from the nearest bus stop on a major street.

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But what if smaller vehicles could patrol those streets and pick up a few passengers at a time? What if smartphone technology makes it possible to schedule pick-ups with multiple riders on the fly in a way that makes sense?

It’s possible. A 2007 report — published before the Uber era — by a non-profit think tank called Community Service Inc suggested “Smart Jitneys” could be a transit and environmental boon. Government is studying an idea of this kind in Kansas City with a company called “bridj” that already provides such a service in Washington DC and in Boston.

In speaking to the Star’s editorial board last week, Mayor John Tory said he’s open to studying how smaller vehicles and this kind of technology could be incorporated into the way the TTC serves the suburbs, and also said he’s open to investigating allowing private companies to provide such services if they can find a way. Which is all to the good.

It’s not clear that a private operator could profitably run a service through those winding cul-de-sacs, nor that the TTC could do it affordably, no matter what size vehicle they used. But it seems ever more possible, given the state of technology, and it seems even more possible if the much-discussed arrival of driverless vehicles a decade or two down the road materializes. (To head off cart-horse order arguments: a decade is the blink of an eye in transit planning circles: we debate construction projects today based on projected riderships in 2031).

As it stands, viability is a moot point, because laws prevent private operators from setting up any service that would compete with TTC bus lines. Even taxi companies are prevented from picking up and charging multiple passengers on the same trip. How will we ever know if such operations could contribute real value to our transportation network if we don’t allow them to even try?

There may be good reasons for the TTC to try to protect its bus service monopoly on downtown routes that earn a profit and subsidize routes in areas of need. But if it wants to do that, it ought to provide service levels worthy of protection. And in inadequately served suburban areas where public transit requires big subsidies to survive, there is no harm in opening up competition to see if private operators can somehow innovate their way to a good solution to a very difficult problem.

We don’t have to love the particular company that does, as Jacobs says, “illegal things to break the monopoly.” But we’d be foolish not to see that its products suggest ways to improve what’s legal — both in how the TTC operates, and in who else we allow to operate beside them.

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